Tag Archives | pulitzer prize

This week my colleague Jesse Eisinger and I won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for our series on Wall Street misdeeds leading up to the financial crisis. The stories showed how some on Wall Street knew years before the rest of us that there were problems in their business but rather than cut it off, they ramped it up. The result was a financial crisis that was bigger and more damaging than it otherwise have been.

I’ll have more soon but right now I just want to thank everyone at ProPublica who did such a tremendous job on this story – that include Eric Umansky our editor, Stephen Engelberg our managing editor, Krista Kjellman-Schmidt who did amazing work on the graphics, and Lisa Schwartz who helped with the research. And of course, Paul Steiger, our editor-in-chief.

Thanks also to everyone who has emailed, tweeted, and facebooked your congratulations. Every one of them is deeply appreciated.

Secrecy World

Jake Bernstein was a senior reporter on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) team that broke the Panama Papers story. In 2017, the project won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and was a finalist in International Reporting. Bernstein earned his first Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting in 2011 for coverage of the financial crises.
He has written for The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Mother Jones, The Guardian, ProPublica, Vice and has appeared on the BBC, NBC, CNN, PBS, and NPR.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Series

The Wall Street Money Machine Enticed by profits and bonuses, Wall Street took advantage of complicated mortgage-based instruments to reap billions, only to exacerbate the eventual crash.

The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going
The hedge fund Magnetar helped create mortgage-based securities, pushed for risky things to go inside them and then bet against the investments, resulting in billions in losses for investors and ultimately making the financial crisis worse. It’s a story of the perverse incentives and reckless behavior that characterized the last days of the boom. Read the story